Glimpses Into van Gogh's Imagination; Two Dutch Museums Offer Fresh Angles on a Favorite Son

By ALAN RIDING

Published: March 12, 2003

AMSTERDAM—
The 150th anniversary of van Gogh's birth on March 30 could hardly go unnoticed here. In normal times the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam receives 1.6 million visitors annually, while about 300,000 visit the Kröller-Müller Museum near Arnhem, which owns the other major van Gogh collection in the Netherlands. This year, linked for the occasion by a shuttle bus, these museums are hoping for a birthday boost to van Gogh tourism.

Their challenge is to present existing collections in ways that suggest an event. Here, they have taken different paths. The Van Gogh Museum is offering ''Vincent's Choice: the Musée Imaginaire of van Gogh'' through June 15, and ''Gogh Modern,'' from June 27 to Oct. 12. At the Kröller-Müller, through Oct. 12, is ''Vincent and Helene,'' Helene being the wife of Anton Kröller, the industrialist who financed her collecting passion.

Of the two shows now open, the Van Gogh Museum exhibition is perhaps the more interesting one because it throws fresh light on that artist's creative process. Most artists find inspiration in other artists, and van Gogh was unusually catholic in his taste, revering Rembrandt, Delacroix and Millet. But he admired many others and commented on no fewer than 1,100 works of art in his letters. ''Vincent's Choice,'' that exhibition proposes, is the collection that van Gogh might have created.

Designed by the New York architect Thierry W. Despont, with 33 oils by van Gogh among the 184 paintings and drawings on display, this show traces van Gogh's creative journey as he takes the themes and compositions of painters who capture his imagination, then reinterprets them in his inimitable style. Today his copies -- above all those of Millet's ''Labors of the Field'' and other peasant scenes -- are often better known than the originals.

''Vincent's Choice'' is organized thematically, but this usually coincides chronologically with van Gogh's discovery of different painters, as recorded in his letters. The first sections on youth and religion, which include no works by van Gogh, are reminders that he was interested in painting long before he devoted himself entirely to art in 1880 at 27.

While his father, a Protestant pastor, had hoped he would enter the church, he began his art education with two uncles who were art dealers. At 16 he joined Goupil & Company, an art dealer in The Hague, where he discovered a panoply of artists through the trade in prints. During long assignments to London and Paris, he frequented the Royal Academy of Arts and the Louvre. Works he admired in his early 20's, like Ruisdael's ''Storm,'' are in this show.

Throughout this period, while still under his father's influence, van Gogh was also drawn to the religious art of 19th-century Dutch artists. As his letters to his younger brother, Theo, testify, he responded strongly to the emotional punch of artists like Ary Scheffer, whose ''Agony in the Garden'' and ''Christus Consolator'' are in this exhibition. They provided what the young van Gogh wanted from art: sentiment, mood and above all consolation.

After leaving Goupil in 1876, he drifted through various jobs. He even trained to be a lay preacher, and though he later rejected organized religion, he remained profoundly spiritual, at times suffering deep psychological distress over his failure to emulate the example of Jesus. His sense of God's presence in nature was crucial. It gave him a reason to be a painter in 1880, and it became his refuge in the months before his suicide in July 1890.

With the section on ''Nature, rural life, sentiment,'' van Gogh himself joins the show. He was particularly taken by the simple dignity of rural laborers, which explains his fascination with Millet. Following Millet's example, he painted and drew peasants working the fields, as with ''Diggers in a Potato Field,'' and at rest.

Living first in The Hague, then in Antwerp in the early 1880's, he studied Rembrandt, Hals and Rubens with enthusiasm, but the truly momentous change in his art came after he moved to Paris in 1886. Already devoted to Delacroix, he was impressed by Puvis de Chavannes. Then, thanks to the Impressionists, he discovered color and light. He also came across Japanese prints. He always welcomed the inspiration of others.

Paris also brought van Gogh into direct contact with many of his contemporaries, with whom he stayed in touch even after he moved in 1888 to Arles in the south of France, where he was joined by Gauguin. Gradually, though, as his mental anguish grew, landscapes alone spoke for him. ''They are vast stretches of corn under troubled skies,'' he wrote to Theo some weeks before his death, ''and I did not have to go out of my way very much in order to try to express sadness, extreme loneliness.''

At the Kröller-Müller, the novelty of ''Vincent and Helene'' is to present van Gogh's works -- 87 paintings and 185 drawings -- in the order in which Helene Kröller-Müller acquired them between 1908 and 1929. The oils, which are normally displayed as part of the museum's broader collection of post-mid-19th-century art, are also shown together.

This museum merits a detour not only for its van Gogh collection and its important works by Mondrian, but also for the many modern and contemporary sculptures on view in the surrounding De Hoge Veluwe Park. The chronology of Helene Kröller-Müller's van Gogh purchases is less interesting than the fervor that fed her shopping spree, which on a single day, May 18, 1920, led her to acquire 26 of his oils.

A news release from the museum said that ''she admired him as a socially committed and impassioned man and as an original and expressive artist.'' In 1911 she began planning a private museum to be built around his paintings. When she donated her collection to the Dutch people in 1932, she did so on condition that a large museum be built in the gardens of her park. It opened in 1938, a year before her death.

This exhibition has van Goghs from all periods, along with many masterpieces, including ''Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum'' and ''Country Road in Provence by Night.'' Its drawings, bought by Kröller-Müller from two collectors, offer particular insight into van Gogh's Dutch work in the early 1880's. Yet as a show ''Vincent and Helene'' offers no great revelations. It is hard to see any logic to this collector's acquisitions beyond their availability.

Photos: ''Vincent's Choice,'' an exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, illustrates how van Gogh derived inspiration from the themes and compositions of other painters. For example, Millet's ''Sower,'' above, led to van Gogh's ''Sower With Setting Sun,'' right. Some of van Gogh's interpretations have even come to overshadow the original works. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston); (Vincent van Gogh Foundation); Emilé Bernard's ''Blue Coffeepot,'' far left, influenced van Gogh's ''Still Life With Coffeepot.'' The works hang side by side at the Van Gogh Museum, along with other pairings that demonstrate how van Gogh drew from numerous artists, including Signac, Hiroshige, Millet, Delacroix and Rembrandt. (Private collection); (Kunsthalle Bremen)